[firstprimate]

My experience is obviously is anecdotal, but nonetheless I learnt this from my daughter.

When she was about 3 my wife and I were discussing a birthday gift. My wife wanted to get her a kitchen play set (stove, dishes, etc) and I disagreed, purely on gender role grounds.

A week later we were visiting with my sister, whose daughter did have one of these play sets. My daughter spent the entire visit playing with that set, and asked for one when we left. My wife looked smug.

In retrospect my thinking was dumb. My own life experience should have clued me in. Most of Western society is built to cater for the white male. Those who aren't are told that 'success' is dependant on behaving more like a white male. That is only true if there is only one type of success, the white male type.

[antiterra]

Your mistake was not acknowledging that a kitchen play set is a great developmental tool for both girls and boys. Deciding that girls should avoid all things stereotypically for women is just as bad as deciding they should avoid all things stereotypically male.

[finnh]

My son's incredible fascination with buses and cars arose with ZERO outside influence, starting when he was maybe 1 year old (he's 2 1/2 now). At the time I don't think he even owned any toy cars, but he would hear a bus driving by our house and shout "bus! bus!" ... it was one of his early high-usage words.

I'm not saying this is down to gender - he could have had the exact same reaction were he a girl - but I am saying this is a genetic predisposition evident in him. Nothing cultural about his love for cars.

Whether this (and other) inherent traits correlate with gender is a question whose answer I don't know. My only point is that culture is not everything - clearly genetics play a big role in what people are interested in.

[nerfhammer]

primate studies have consistently shown monkeys and chimpanzees have similar sex-based toy preferences as humans

e.g., http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18452921

[djur]

What mechanism do you suggest for a genetic predisposition for interest in a technology that was invented in the last handful of generations? How could there possibly be a "car gene"?

[gbog]

There could be a predisposition for males to be attracted by noisy or fast moving things, because that is what they will have to care about when they grow up, in a hunter gatherer society. Have you seen kitten chasing things? They are obviously predisposed to grab and chase and their early games prepare them for hunting in adult life. There could be a "car gene" as much as there could be a "play with a doll" gene. Wishful thinking cannot remove such a possibility.

[nerfhammer]

see sibling comment

[ZeroGravitas]

My son had a fascination (amongst many others) with hairdryers. We once watched an advert together for a pink barbie toy hairdryer that blew out sparkly bits when on.

Noticing his interest I asked him if he wanted one. He looked at me as if I was an idiot. Pink is for girls he explains. I think that's the end of it but no, he goes on to say he'd like a blue one.

Clearly he hadn't fully internalised the cultural rules at that point. Not long afterwards I can remember him becoming acutely embarrassed by the pink play house he'd inherited from a cousin that he'd previously enjoyed playing with.

[marquis]

That's a perfect description of children figuring out the world. I remember having the same confused experience as a young girl, being embarrassed that my girly friends would come over and I wanted to build things outside instead of playing dress-ups. Convincing an 8 year old girl who's been told not to get her clothes dirty to come out and play in the mud is tough, until you let her wear your own overalls and you both go out and get filthy. I'm sure her mother wasn't impressed with me but I'm proud of that day.

[GFischer]

You remind me of the Swedish gender experiments:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-14038419

hn discussion:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3831429

another The Atlantic article on the subject:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4903247

a story on women making less than men in programming:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3289750

[xixi77]

As I noted in another comment already, kitchen playset was one of my favorite toys, and I kept bothering my parents to get more of those :) No, I'm not a woman. They are just fun for a lot of kids!